The Royal Hotel

Ate here again and enjoyed it as usual. Good food, well cooked and served with a smile. All good. However, the dessert menu, to me, is disappointing. There are seven choices, but five of them contain nuts of some description. It's a bit of a shame for anyone who can't eat nuts like me.

My first visit to the royal: we ordered our food and the waitress came back 5 mins later to say she had missed one dish off the order, so we re ordered. Nearly 90 mins later, our food hadn’t arrived, so when we complained, the same waitress claimed she never took our order as she had never moved from Behind the bar all shift (she had!) The manager couldn’t apologise enough but we were all starving and unhappy at this point. Im not sure what went wrong with the order but it was very odd! I ordered the goats cheese pie, and received a normal cheddar pie (I’m guessing they just cooked up whatever to keep us happy!) As first impressions go, it wasn’t great!

I see mixed reviews on here but we couldn’t fault our meals. A family of 5. Beautifully presented, hot and plenty of it. Roasted sweet potato, spinach & goats cheese wellington Sunday lunch was amazing. Finished with the lemon and stem ginger, sticky treacle toffee tart and ice cream. Probably the best Sunday lunch I’ve eaten out. Our waitress was kind and polite. It isn’t cheap to eat out these days but it was well worth it.

We went for my daughter's 18th birthday, it was a family celebration meal, there were 8 of us. It was very quiet, a Monday night but we were less than impressed. Both of the waiting staff we had were unfriendly and unwelcoming, in fact they were downright miserable! The service was poor and the meal, for the price, was decidedly average. I had told them on the online booking that it was for my daughter's 18th and so assumed, wrongly that they would at the very least, give her a drink on the house, or maybe a little cake, but nothing, not even when I told the waiter when we got there and gave him a nudge/wink - absolutely nothing! Were then told at about 10pm that they would be closing in 15 mins, we were actually close to leaving anyway, just waiting for one of our party to be collected. We definitely will NOT be back and WOULD NOT recommend! I'm gutted we chose here out of all the other lovely places we have locally, they don't deserve business!

The steak and the mixed grill was very very rubbery. I couldn’t eat the steak even with a steak knife. It was that bad. Nobody came back to ask how the meal was. It was very nice inside but the menu had more garlic in most of the meals apart from that it was good.

I believe this establishment needs to make its mind up whether it is a hotel, pub or restaurant. Our visit was on the 1st of October 2024. Four of us (two couples) went for a Sunday afternoon drink (4 o'clock). We took our drinks into the beer garden and sat in the lovely sunshine although, as the late afternoon became cooler, we decided to move inside. We bought our drinks at the bar and found a small table for four with no 'Reserved' notice on it and sat down. We had just got seated when a waitress told us we would have to find another table as the one we were sat at was reserved. I asked if she could find another table for us to move to and she went off to look. However, another older lady, who we took to be the manager, came back and said there were no other available tables and that we should take our drinks and sit outside. I pointed out that we had just come in from the garden and that the table was not designated as being reserved. She simply said it was reserved and that I was being rude arguing with her. This type of incident has happened to us previously at the Royal, once when we arranged to meet family members for a drink and again, on another occasion, when we arranged to meet friends. This establishment should (in my opinion), stop advertising itself as a pub (see Punch Pubs website) . It may be a decent hotel and restaurant but it is certainly not what I would call a 'welcoming, community Pub'. The fact that there are no seats at the bar and that nearly every table seems to be marked as 'Reserved' should be a warning to groups wishing to meet here for a drink. You can (and in our experience, will) be moved in preference to diners even after spending nearly £80.00 on four rounds of drinks. Needless to say, we will not be arranging to meet for drinks at the Royal again. In our country experience, the advertised 'welcoming Pub' was no apparent, due, in part, to the attitude of the, apparently, more senior members of staff.